Processing Bank Statement Transactions

Bank Statements can be imported manually or created automatically using Bank Feeds. Process the transactions in each statement by following the instructions below.

Navigate to the Banking tab and then the Bank Imports tab.

• Bank account: Bank Account of the statement.
• Start date: The date of the earliest transaction.
• End date: The date of the latest transaction.
• Import date: The date you imported the file into AccountsPortal.
• Statement lines processed: Current status of the statement.
• Delete statement: The option to delete a statement only exists if there are 0 lines processed.

Click on a bank statement line to open the statement for processing

• Date: The date the transaction cleared at the bank or appeared on the statement.
• Amount: The amount provided in the statement.
• Payee: This is the payee or payer. The text in this field is used to search for the relevant Import Rule. It will also be used as the basis for creating new rules automatically if activated in your organisation's settings.
• Reference: Any relevant information provided by the bank that you assign to the Reference field in the bank transaction.
• Transaction Memo: Any relevant information provided by the bank that you assign to the Notes field in the bank transaction.
• Action: You can either Process, View, Delete, or Unlink a bank statement line

Process a Transaction

By clicking on the Process button, you will intiate a new Spend or Receive Money transaction. If the system finds an appropriate import rule, a notification will appear on the screen and the transaction will be pre-filled accordingly.Changing the text of the Import Rule will update the search term in the saved rule already set up.

Once you have processed an imported transaction, the status will be updated to reflect the Transaction ID of the bank transaction.

All transactions created from bank statement line are automatically marked as Reconciled. Read the Bank Reconciliation help document for more information on the reconcilation concept and how to unreconcile a transaction,

Matching Existing Transactions

You may have already entered a Spend or Receive Money transaction in advance of importing a bank statement, e.g. for a cheque sent to a supplier. An option to Match Existing transactions will be availble when you start processing the bank statement line. Select the appropriate saved transaction which matches the bank statement line and click on the Match Selected Transaction button. If you create a new Spend or Receive Money transaction instead of matching the values, you are likely to have created a duplicate entry in your bank account. This should become evident when you carry out a Bank Reconciliation.

Unlink a Processed Transaction

If an imported transaction has already been processed, then you can click Unlink to unlink the statement transaction and the saved bank transaction. This action will mark the saved bank transaction as unreconciled but does not delete it. The bank transaction can only be deleted in the Bank Transactions screen.

Timing Differences

When importing a bank statement, timing differences can arise between the actual transaction date and the value appearing on your bank statement. Time taken for cheques to clear is a good example of this. This is especially relevant if you are registered for Cash Accounting VAT, which has special rules regarding receipt date and does not consider the relevant date to be the date the cash clears in your bank statement (see HMRC website for further details) In some cases, it is therefore more appropriate to make use of Receive Money or Spend Money options to initially record the entry followed by a 'matching' activity when the values clear on the bank statement which has been imported.